Cycling Books

The Cyclist's Training Bible by Joe Friel
Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance
The Lance Armstrong Performance Program
Zinn's Cycling Primer

Recommended in that order.

Bike Racing 101 by Rene & Kendra Wenzel
Racing Tactics for Cyclist by Thomas Prehn
Serious Cycling by Edmund R. Burke PhD.

Serious Cycling by Edmund R. Burke
The Cyclist's Training Bible by Joe Friel
The Ultimate Ride by Chris Carmichael

These are essential books to have and read.

I am curious also, anyone else have an input or can support any of the books already named?

Nutrition for serious atheletes is wonderful. Is as in-depth, or basic as you need and gives the logic behind foods, drinks, supplements, vitamins, minerals, etc. etc.

its not about training but more about nutrition "Chris Carmichael's Food for Fitness: Eat Right to Train Right"

A good fun book to read is "Heft on Wheels" by Mike Magnuson. Its a hillarious, entertaining book about a man who was 270# and worked his way down to 173#s.

roger0246 said:

A good fun book to read is "Heft on Wheels" by Mike Magnuson. Its a hillarious, entertaining book about a man who was 270# and worked his way down to 173#s.

Just finished it a couple days ago. Really good book.

Irish Indurain said:

I'm a novice cyclist and was scanning through amazon.co.uk for books to help me implement a proper cycling training programme. I was wondering if anyone could recommend good reads for training, nutrition and bike maintanence.
On amazon i found books by Chris Carmichael which looked pretty good on training and a book by 'Zinn' on bike maintanence.

Would these be the best on the market or are there better ones for novices out there? Any feedback would be really helpful. Thanks!

Bike Racing 101 (Wenzel) is a great book if you're just about to get into bike racing. It assumes a relative experience of riding and good fitness (ie: ready to start racing)

Another great book I found recently is online at www.50topbikeracingtips.com
This gives you 50 riding tips and covers everything from planning the season to nutrition to race tactics- should cover everything you need
Hope that helps

Bike Racing 101 - Wenzel
Serious Cycling - Burke

Are a good start and will probably give you all you'll need. Burke's book is particularly good on nutrition which is vital if you are going to get serious.

Good Luck Jay

Nitrojan646 said:

I am curious also, anyone else have an input or can support any of the books already named?

[font=Arial]Friel’s book: Contradictionary to e.g. this site are the long Base periods, and heaps of strength training.[/font]

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[font=Arial]Bourke: I don’t have the latest version; but in the earlier version there were at least some annoying contradictions for the prepare or peak periods, the recommendations was to have like 2-3 hard rides per week, but the example training schedules had like 4-5 hard rides per week. But this may have had serious update in the later edition.[/font]

[font=Arial] [/font]

[font=Arial]Carmichael (Ultimate Ride): Some old tales included, like “Cleaning the tyres with the cycling gloves after riding over glas”, I found this kind of stories nonsense. Besides, not so detailed training advice given in Carmichael’s as in books of Friel or Bourke.[/font]

[font=Arial] [/font]

[font=Arial]Anyway, all those books are worth reading, as the topics of this Forum, specially those sticked ones.[/font]

Go to www.coachcarl.com and buy his e-book. Fantastically straight forward w/ a bit of old-school no-nonsense bulls**t.

If you can find it, get Hinault's book from the 80's. Check Amazon used stuff. Great info on technique and skills (exactly what most beginners skip on their way to interval school).

Lastly, for something current, the bike racing 101 tactics book mentioned in above posts (I think Coach Wenzel) seems like a good one.

Most importantly find books that discuss everything racing, not just this week's training programs.

I found Joe Friel's "The Cyclist's Training Bible" to be very good and helpful.
Of course it's useful if you race/plan to.
I suppose it's not so useful if you just want to have fun on the bike.